While gathering some information on Grana Padano, a type of Parmesan, I discovered to my surprise that it was close to 1000 years old.
Cistercian monks in Chiaravalle (Italy) started making this cheese as a way of saving milk. An unpasteurized, hard, cow milk cheese, it ripens in 12 to 48 months and can be eaten or shaved or grated on your salads or pastas and more. For more details read About.com tasting review.

Ryan Singel writes today on Wired on how Ritual Coffee Roasters, in Mission District of San Francisco,  established itself in the past few months as the favorite hangout and second office for many programmers and other techies. His article "Cafe 2.0: After the gold rush" tells us as much about the passion and love of tinkering with the art of good coffee that the owners, Jeremy Tooker and Eileen Hassi bring to the place.

Who does not have medical and health questions? A new service just launched, Healthline who define themselves as "The web's best health information at your fingertips" is indeed quite good. I did a couple of searches including one on the Flu Season. I checked my state (New Jersey) on the map, got quick access to local statistics and flu clinics. All the information was in plain english, a breeze to use. They are now in Beta (early release) so there might be some kinks here and there but over all it is a very good tool.
To give credit where it's due, I found out about Healthline on Techcrunch.

We all struggle with our to-do-lists. from Australia, Emily Boyd and Omar Kilani offer us 'Remember the Milk' as a simple way to deal with our tasks, to-do-lists and schedules. You can organize them by categories, due dates and color code them amongst other things. Best of all it is free. No software download is needed, just register and it is ready to use within minutes. For more details visit their 'Learn More' page.

After hearing a segment about  Fundable on Marketplace (NPR), I took a look at their offering.
It sounds like a good way to raise Funds for your kids PTA, Library, Museum, Pet Shelter and other local needs.

You can use it as well to pay for Collective Purchases such as a shared Summer Rental.
It offers a practical way to sell tickets for an Event you organize.
Musicians or Filmmakers or Entrepreneurs could consider it to get seed money for their new endeavour.

In a special report on Japan in today's Financial Times, David Pilling piece 'Small, but perfectly funded' explains how the  'Shibuya Girls' are trendsetters in such areas as fashion and cell phones. They create the buzz or bring down products through 'kuchi-komi', the japanese version of word of mouth marketing. David tells us that everyday thousands of them visit 'Shibuya', Tokyo's place to be for upcoming tech and fashion trends.
Unfortunately there is no Link available to David Pillings's piece.

Maybe you have not noticed the 'BOBS...VOTE' button on this BLOG. Well it means that we are one of the many taking part in the 'Best of the Blogs 2005' organized by Deutsche Welle. Check our entry for more details.
Thanks to Loic Lemeur for bringing 'The Bobs' to our attention

According to the Internet Archive, Alfred Hitchcock's classic 'Charade' (1963) with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn is now part of the public domain.

Even if you do not have a wine cellar. Intelliscanner offers Wine Collector 150. It allows you by scanning the retail barcode on the bottle to get all relevant information on the wine without having to type it. It also gives you the maturity charts for it. This nifty tool starts at $199.00 and is available in Blue Tooth and USB versions. I discovered it on Coudal.

A few days ago, Clotilde celebrated a milestone, 2 years of 'Chocolate and Zucchini'. She announced as well that she signed with a New York publisher for her upcoming book. We look forward to meet her in person during the book launch here in the US.